


Well I Guess This Is Growing Up

by Mousieta



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ichigo is taller (I will die on this hill), Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - Office, Angst, M/M, Romance, Tattoos, UraIchi Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 07:16:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24467077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mousieta/pseuds/Mousieta
Summary: This is the story of how Ichigo and Kisuke fall in love. How they screw it up. How they lose each other and find themselves and then, maybe, get a second chance.
Relationships: Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 12
Kudos: 72
Collections: UraIchi Week 2020





	Well I Guess This Is Growing Up

**Author's Note:**

> Look, it's midnight, and Miracle of Miracles, I actually managed to write something for UraIchi week. I've been looking forward to this for months then life put me thru the wringer this month. So I am posting NOW! XD 
> 
> Is this the story I had planned for this week? No. That one is still in the works. But I basically channeled this in two days so I ain't complaining. 
> 
> A million thanks to Sam for being Sam, and for cleaning up my mess. <3 Much love to the bleach discords that have provided welcome distraction in this trying time (even if I haven't been able to chat much, just reading through is wonderful)
> 
> Also this *was* beta'ed but I am really excited (can't ya tell) and so there may be errors. I am kinda sorry.

This is a story about growing up.

It was part of life, duh. Ichigo knew all about it. Grow up, go to school, get a job, fall in love, get married. If asked, Ichigo would say he’d been in love before. 

There were whole days of High School lost in the haze of fantasies of Orihime, whole nights seemingly lost to dreams with embarrassing consequences. Sometimes she would pass him in the hallways between classes. Sometimes she would smile at him and blush. Sometimes she would talk to him and his heart would race so fast it nearly burst. Or so it felt. 

Freshman year he discovered she’d moved across state to go to the same University as him. She and Chad, the only familiar faces hundreds of miles from home. 

There was companionship and camaraderie and a night of shy handholding and soft kisses followed by a morning of gentle rejection. 

Ichigo would say that was a time of heart-break and wonder why movies and songs always seemed to make such a big deal about it. 

Yes, it hurt. He’d cried. Spent a weekend drunk in the backyard of the house Chad shared with three other guys. 

A month later it was impossible to remember the shape of the pain, the exact angle at which Orihime’s words had cut. 

A few months later he had his friend back and, actually getting to know her, he realized how cool she was. He learned what a burden developing so much at a young age had been, and he was able to celebrate when she got together with a guy in the Fashion Design department. 

Heartbreak was easy if the rest of the world could just be grown up about it. Getting an Internship - now  _ that  _ was hard. 

He would be dammed if he wound up a doctor, like his father. But damned if he knew what he  _ actually _ wanted to do with his life. The only time he ever felt a spark of interest in anything was the nights he’d go out with his friends. He somehow always found himself making sure everyone was taken care of, drinks weren’t tampered with, pushy guys were intimidated away by his height and breadth - professional Designated Driver wasn’t a thing, was it?

Business had just been at the top of the list of choices when applying for college. And, apparently, business schools required internships. Internships required interviews. Interviews required that you cared. Or, were at least good at lying. 

It was Rukia - the little squirt of a girl with fight three times her size (it was always the small ones, he noted) who’d forcibly befriended him his first week - who found him a spot. Pulled some strings with her family, she’d confessed. Apparently they were rich, because of course they were. 

Still, a job was a job, even in the mail room, and especially when it counted for college credit. 

There was some teasing, a few glances cast askance the first few weeks. Apparently his orange hair was a bit too radical for corporate spheres, but a short chat with a kid that looked far too young to be running the entirety of the HR department (seriously the kid looked younger than Ichigo and was no one to talk in the hair department), and it all died down. 

As a kid, he’d always figured grown ups were, well, grown-up (his father notwithstanding). Teachers and professors droned on about it. Adult worries seemed centered on bills and interest rates and insurance and equity, blah blah. 

So it shocked him the first time he watched two men argue over the size of the font in a presentation and he realized he was witnessing a pissing contest. Another man spent a full week desperately trying to keep his wife from knowing he’d spent $3,000 getting his classic car repainted, which was exactly the same as the time he’d frantically tried to hide the paint spill in the garage from his dad. 

“Adults are just kids with credit cards and ulcers,” the head of the intern department  _ and _ admin staff, Shinji, told him one morning as he rocked on the back legs of his chair. 

Apparently, they were, he told himself as Shinji’s chair abruptly landed on all fours and Shinji disappeared at the sound of the words 'bagels in the breakroom’. 

The upper levels of the company were the most interesting. Ichigo watched in fascination as they, in their well pressed suits and slicked back hair, engaged in glorified sandbox brawls. Except it was money and people’s lives in place of sand and tinker toys. 

Yamamoto was the Old Man - the head, the top, untouchable, liked and respected by all, above the fray. It was his company and he led it with a hand that Ichigo couldn’t see - but everyone said he was the leader so, sure, if they said so. His right hand was Sasakibe, and Ichigo couldn’t tell that he really did much of anything but smile and push paper, but it was apparently good enough for a millionaire's salary (Shinji liked to ‘taste-test’ the mail).

There was a faction that Ichigo assumed was linked to Rukia from the last name, Kuchiki. Apart from helping him with the job, however, they gave him no notice. 

There were various other factions and sub factions. The only ones he bothered to notice were Aizen’s, and he was pretty sure he was the only one who’d call them a faction. Most people seemed to like Aizen. Maybe it was Shinji’s constant shit-talking that biased him, but once he started to look for it, nearly every conflict somehow wound its way back to him and the small handful of people who seemed to be his only confidants. 

“Why do you care about all this shit?” Hiyori scoffed and Ichigo had no answer for her. It was just interesting. “Buncha stupid lives of a buncha stupid people who don’t care two shits about you, with more money to throw around in an afternoon than you’ll see in a lifetime. Worthless.”

She had a point. But it filled the time, gave him something to do. It was surreal and bizarre that this was real life. This was adulthood. This was what he should aspire to? He made a note to give Yuzu less shit about her celebrity TV binges. 

“Hey, Kisuke’s back,” Shinji announced like it was an important bit of information. To everyone in the mail room except Ichigo, it apparently was. 

Kisuke was well liked. Heartblood of the company. The only person who really knew what was going on, if only the other suits would recognize it. Too good for all this nonsense, actually. Good he was back, though. The London office wasn’t good enough for him. Nothing was good enough for him. 

“So, I guess he’s pretty cool?”

Lisa informed him, “he’s the only one who does anything for us down here. He looks out for us ever since Aizen-” She never finished the thought. 

Kisuke didn’t seem like much to Ichigo. If the other interns and assistants hadn’t made such a big deal he wouldn’t have looked at the man twice. Typical suit, tie, pressed shirt that probably cost a disgusting amount, hair maybe a bit longer than the office norm, but still slicked back to perfection. His voice was quiet, his expression often distracted. 

He did actually say hi, though, if passed in the corridors. That was enough to put him in Ichigo’s good book, which was remarkably small. 

Kisuke seemed aligned with the Shihouin faction. Or, at least, he spent a lot of time with Yoruichi. 

“Dating?” Ichigo asked. 

Shinji shook his head. “Life-long friends.” Shinji began his 3-in-the-afternoon spinning in the stool for ten minutes ritual. “Think he had a fling with a guy in shipping like 5 years ago or so, but never really seen him with anyone apart from that.”

“So, gay?”

Shinji shrugged. “Man, I don’t know. Don’t care.” Finally at the apex of the stool’s limit, he let go of the table holding him steady and whipped around in a circle, arms and legs stretched out. “Whhhooooooo.”

Ichigo liked gay kids. They liked to use him to practice kissing. The thought of Kisuke using him to practice kissing popped in his head and then refused to be dislodged for a very awkward week. 

Kisuke pinged Ichigo’s interest shortly after that. He’d been chatting in the break room with Ikkaku. He’d been thinking of getting a tattoo. 

“You’ll want to see Kukaku if you can,” Kisuke said. His voice was gentle and unobtrusive, but impossible to ignore. Ichigo wondered how he did it. 

“Shiba?” Ichigo asked for clarity and to pivot his shock. The suits never addressed regulars like him. 

Kisuke just nodded and gave him a smile. “Yeah, she’s the best.” 

“I know - but I don’t think I’d ever have a chance.”

Kisuke disappeared into the stock cupboard. 

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Ikkaku said before he noticed Yumichika waving for him and ducked out, coffee in hand. 

Ichigo finished cream cheesing his bagel and Kisuke came back around. “If what you want is something with lots of linework, Kukaku really is the best.”

“Yeah,” Ichigo said. “That’s what I’ve heard. I’m not sure if I actually want one though, but I keep leaning towards it, can’t seem to stop thinking about it so maybe -”

Kisuke smiled. An actual one, not the half one he got in passing. It was soft, sweet. It brought a light to his eyes and made them look too-bright. It was the first time Ichigo ever felt like he’d been punched to the gut by an expression. 

“Well, let me know if you make a decision,” he said cryptically then wandered off towards his office. 

Ichigo fell victim to another bout of fighting away intrusive thoughts of what it would be like to practice kissing with Kisuke. It took a few weeks to get under control; avoiding Kisuke as much as possible helped. 

Orihime diagnosed him with a crush. Chad’s grunt provided a second opinion. 

Just great. 

Apparently a crush meant he couldn’t stop thinking about Kisuke, the fantasies about kissing were the least of it. There were several times his heart skittered as he caught a flash of blond hair in the corner of his eye. 

But he was pretty sure a suit like Kisuke wouldn’t be in a club watching a bunch of indie bands. 

A few weeks later Ichigo was in the office late, roped into printing a large set of displays that were allegedly ‘high priority’. There were a few offices lit, a few work stations occupied. Bored while the printer chugged away, Ichigo wandered up and down the hallways. 

“Oh, hey-”

Shit. 

The blood surged, uncomfortably, through Ichigo’s body. “Kisuke, hi.” He leaned awkwardly against a workspace partition and Kisuke half-sat on an empty desk. 

Kisuke was not in a suit, he was in the remnants of one. Dark grey slacks, white shirt - with only the memory of starch and iron - half untucked. Its sleeves were rolled up to mid forearm where dark swirls over his golden skin peeked out. Another flick of black ink licked at a fraction of the collar exposed by the undone top buttons of the shirt. 

Ichigo’s mouth went dry. He tried to focus on what Kisuke said, a herculean feat. “No, no tattoo yet. But I’m sure I want one, now. Just haven’t been able to get an appointment.”

Kisuke’s hair was soft - gel long gone. It fell in gentle waves, half hooked behind one ear and the rest brushing over his open collar. A dusting of scruff shadowed his jaw. 

“It’s a shame,” he was saying. “You tried Kukaku?”

“Yeah - she’s booked solid for months. So I’m thinking of just going with -”

“Nah, don’t go with someone else. You really want her. I’ll see what I can do.”

Ichigo slipped off the partition. “You- you could do that?”

Kisuke chuckled. “Yeah I know her.”

“If you could - man - that would, that would be-”

Kisuke laughed out loud. “It’s not that big a deal. But yeah I don’t mind. I was going to see her in a few weeks, so I can see what she says. Hey, what are you doing here late anyway? I didn’t think mailroom kids could pull overtime?”

“I’m actually an intern. The marketing team needed all these banners?” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the print room. 

“Ah-”

Ichigo took a chance. There were tattoos teasing him on Kisuke’s skin, afterall. “Were you, by chance, at the show at Loop last weekend?”

“Ah - ha I was, were you there too?”

Kisuke who kept the company running, wore perfectly pressed suits and was covered in tattoos went to indie shows on weekends. 

~*~

This is a story about infatuation. 

Ichigo asked Kisuke if he wanted to go to the show that night. New groups were supposed to be playing. 

“I should,” Kisuke admitted. “Yoruichi is always telling me to get out more. Who’s playing?”

“Fin and K.L.S.?

“Oh nice. I like K.L.S. But -” Kisuke’s eyes darted around conspiratorially - “how would you like to go see Bread8?”

“Bread8?!” Ichigo totally screeched, but before he could be mortified Kisuke laughed again. He laughed a lot when they talked, smiled a lot, too. That knowledge beat his heart like a drum. Ichigo was justified in fanboying. Bread8 were legendary in the indie scene and hadn’t played a gig in 3 years. 

“They’re playing a secret gig tonight-” he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “If we go early maybe we can meet them for dinner - oh and this is perfect Kukaku will be there, she likes to eat with her brother before his shows, we can talk to her!”

“Brother?”

“Gangju-” he said absently before putting the phone to his ear. He waved as he turned and headed back to his office. Ichigo followed and listened as Kisuke sweet-talked Jinta into coming back up to the office (“You really shouldn’t be doing things like this anyway,” Kisuke rationalized with his hand over the phone mic) with promises of overtime pay and comped dinner. 

Ichigo waited while Kisuke gathered his things, keys to pocket, laptop slung into backpack swung over shoulder, rumpled suit coat draped over forearm and another phonecall to harangue Shinji about his treatment of interns (“You’re moving into one of the production teams,” Kisuke informed him with, again, a hand over his phone).

“You got your things?” Kisuke asked and, helpless in his wake, Ichigo could only nod. All he had was himself. 

He climbed into the passenger seat of Kisuke’s Lexus (“gift from Yoruichi because she said my old clunker was embarrassing”) and listened as Kisuke dumped all the gossip from the local scene right into Ichigo’s lap. He took it in, little oddities of the bands he’d followed and musicians he’d idolized falling into place, but mostly he sat in awe of this man, so unobtrusive and usually quiet grown animated and alive as he chattered about the scene and history and - 

With a ragged thud his heart beat shifted around his feelings, lust now sprinkled with a hint of love. 

They didn’t kiss that night, though the desire to burned through Ichigo every second they were together. They did, however, work out getting Ichigo in to see Kukaku. She complained, but it was with a sparkle in her eye. Affection for Kisuke seemed endemic and Ichigo began to understand why. 

~*~

This is also a story about indulgence and self-deception.

Kisuke didn’t even think to kiss Ichigo the second time they went to a show together, a week after the first, but it was the funnest night he’d had out in longer than he could remember. 

He didn’t think to kiss Ichigo a week after that, even, when Ichigo, reassigned up out of the mail-room, actually had to stay late working on a presentation. Kisuke  _ did,  _ however, find it convenient to stay late with him and run the numbers again and again (and again for good measure). So it was just the two of them resuming the conversation from that first night that had not yet seemed to end, but had grown, peppered with flirtation and teasing that felt like more of a home than Kisuke had ever known. 

There was a moment a week after that, at another show, when Kisuke noticed what was going on, sensed the air sparking between them and knew enough to recognize it. He thought of kissing Ichigo then, tentatively. His initial hesitancy eroded later that night, when he was home, alone, avoiding sleep. The liberal application of alcohol gave weight to the Yoruichi voice in his head telling him he should get out there, date, indulge, have a fling. 

Ichigo was brilliant in a way he had so little experience with. He’d been taken into the company so young - orphan pulled under the wing of the Shihouin clan - survival necessitated duplicity, manipulation, obfuscation became second nature. And Ichigo swept in with a brash laugh and unruly hair, every thought in his head plain on his face. Stubborn and undaunted, he charged at every task set for him like a bull seeing red. Like his brain had never learned to understand the words “that’s impossible”. 

“I’m attracted.” He slurred his confession to his uncaring fireplace. The thought cemented with the memory of the way Ichigo had looked that first night they went out together. The orange hair was a shock, but after that wore off it seemed impossible his hair could be any other color. He was tall - taller than Kisuke. And whip slender, a fact made painfully apparent in the width of his shoulders. And he had a jawline that made Kisuke’s chest ache in a particular way. And eyes that shone whenever he stood, coke bottle in hand, looking up at the band playing on stage.

Hesitancy shattered to oblivion by the time he fell into his bed, already half hard with the images of Ichigo in his head, hand palming his cock to hardness, stroking it to explosion with Ichigo’s name a sweet flavor on his lips. 

They kissed after the show at Loop that weekend. 

Friday night. 

In the alley. 

Waiting for the band to come out so they could go grab greasy-ass tacos at the only joint still open.

“You know  _ all  _ these guys, huh?” 

He gave a self-deprecating huff. Ichigo always sounded so awestruck, like it was something amazing. “I went to school with most of these kids.”

“Kids,” Ichigo scoffed and Kisuke had to smile - he was always smiling when Ichigo was around. It was unconscious, unbidden, unstoppable. 

“So’d you get it?” Kisuke asked and he really, really wanted to know what ink on Ichigo’s skin looked like. 

Ichigo leaned back against the bricks, casual nonchalance belied by his eager grin as he lifted the hem of his shirt. 

Lust spiked through Kisuke as he took in the black swirls - still a bit red and inflamed so he spared a wince of sympathy - tracing the lines and grooves of Ichigo’s hips. He bent at the waist to get a good look, Ichigo jutting out his hips to catch the scraps of light from the yellow bulb over the back door. 

It happened as he stood up - they were so close - the air so tight it pulled them together. Who kissed who - who started it - who leaned in first. He would never know, didn’t care. All that mattered was that Ichigo tasted sweet - remnants of soda on his lips - and his arms wrapped Kisuke easily, pulling him in close; their bodies aligned as though pulling from memories of how to kiss one another instead of treading new ground. 

It lasted a moment, it was an eternity broken by the shattering of the stage door hitting the wall as it flung open. 

There were cat-calls and jeers tinged with affection and they walked arm-in arm to dinner, Ichigo as red as his hair, as red as Kisuke’s cheeks. 

As easy as kissing was, sex was easier; grinding desperate cocks against one another at his place, spectacular failure at sixty-nining that devolved into giggly turns at blowjobs in Ichigo’s pitiable closet of an apartment, more back at his place with some actual penetration and cuddles because there was so much space, even some rushed handjobs in the the break room after hours or a convenient storage closet, because not touching Ichigo’s skin, hearing him gasp Kisuke’s name, tasting his come on the back of his tongue was akin to a death sentence. 

Kisuke took to fucking Ichigo like a man drowning, an Oasis closing in around him after years in the desert. 

Sometimes Kisuke felt guilty. For all he was an adult, in so many ways Ichigo was a kid. He told himself he should stop, but how could he stop something so easy, so natural, so good? It was just a fling, harmless fun, easy fucking (so much fucking).

And so he indulged, not realizing he was getting the youth that had been taken from him. 

~*~

But the world is not constrained to the four corners of a bed or the four walls of a passion filled coat closet at old man Yamamoto’s annual company get together. 

And so, this is a story about betrayal and because betrayal requires something be betrayed, it is also a story about love. 

Ichigo fell first. Typical for someone who’s never walked that path before, the chasm appeared below him and he tumbled in head over heels. He scoffed at what he thought was love before. Kisuke was oxygen, was life. His existence seemed destined to encompass the tracing of every tattoo over Kisuke’s skin, the colorful and exotic creatures that looped over his arms, the black swirls and flourishes that licked over his collar bones - that had so tantalized him their first night out- and the ripple of geometric shapes that cascaded down his chest to disappear right above the coarse blond hair below his navel.

It was true, he realized, as the weeks turned into months, to half a year, that very little deserved Kisuke. Kisuke with his fierce determination and brilliant mind. Kisuke with his unassuming presence that was actually the steady backbone of the company. Kisuke with his seeming mountains of guilt and self-hate that Ichigo couldn’t begin to understand, but desperately wanted to penetrate. To show Kisuke how incredible he really was and not be deflected by a self-deprecating laugh. 

  
  


Kisuke was more guarded. Life had made him so. Lying to himself was as natural as manipulating the other executives. He fell just as deep and just as hard as Ichigo, how could he not when Ichigo loved so shamelessly, it was written in every line of his body ,every moment they stood close, heavy in every word they shared. It was overwhelming and, so, had to be ignored. Self-deception provided the mirage of shallowness; every time he felt Ichigo get too close he pushed, he deflected, he laughed and evaded. 

Because, surely, he was unworthy of the brilliant, blinding love on offer. 

They talked, and they laughed, they fucked and they talked some more. That conversation that started the first night kept right on going, never ending. Until it did. 

They kept it quiet - what was between them - for as long as they could. They were quite good at it, actually. But spies were everywhere and Kisuke’s position was coveted. 

He thought he could stay ahead of them. He thought he was smarter. He used everything at his disposal, yes even Ichigo. 

He used Ichigo’s love, took advantage of his trust, made him a pawn in the game that would secure their future, he reasoned. Because he had to win and outsmart Aizen. 

“He’s strong enough to handle it,” Kisuke told himself. He was right, but miscalculated the cost. Miscalculated Aizen’s abilities and his allies.

“Why didn’t you trust me?”

The look on Ichigo’s face would haunt Kisuke for years after. 

“I could have helped you. I wanted to help you.”

The truth broke Kisuke, but he didn’t have time to break, so he shoved it away with everything else. “Why would I need the help of a kid,” he sneered as he walked into old man Yamamoto’s office to claim his victory, however Pyrrhic.

The truth was it wasn’t that Ichigo couldn’t be trusted. It was that Kisuke had never, ever, trusted himself. 

Ichigo would survive. He was, after all, still basically a kid. Kids were resilient. He’d burned all his friendships, but forgiving Ichigo was an easy thing, he inspired such love and devotion. He’d have to do some grovelling with the school, ethics and academic probation and all, probably graduate a semester or two late but what was a few months, a year, at 19, 20.

Kids were stupid and fell in love too easy, he told himself as he wrung the softness from his heart (like he deserved). It served Ichigo right for trusting him. He should learn that trusting was dangerous. 

Lies. 

Lies. 

Lies. 

~*~

This is a story about time … and loss.

Ichigo went back to school and fulfilled all of Kisuke’s prophecies. His friends did forgive him, with time. He made it through his probation and graduated. It took a little longer than expected. His subsequent internships nowhere near the corporate word. 

And then he drifted. Unsure. 

The only things that mattered to him were the people he loved. The only thing he cared to do was be there for them. Support them. Protect them. 

He eventually forgave Kisuke, he’d understood the whole time. He learned the bitter taste of regret that he’d been unable to somehow save him, protect him from becoming what he became (he’d get word from time to time through the indie scene he could never really leave). 

He fell in love a few more times as well, as he went from job to job, trying to find something that fit. Got his heart broken, too, though none hurt as much as Kisuke (no love was that deep either but, oh well). And eventually news of Kisuke dried up and that was probably for the best. 

  
  


Kisuke held on to his victory and gained the satisfaction of watching Aizen, finally, fall. 

“Was it worth it?” Yoruichi asked. Her words were flat. There was no judgment, not from her. No, the judgment only burned from within Kisuke’s breast. 

“Yes,” he lied, he said. One was the same as the other. 

“It wasn’t.”

“Aizen is gone.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She leaned forward, eyes piercing him. 

He was tired, he didn’t want to have this conversation. He had it every night while he clawed for sleep. He didn’t need it out loud. “What do you mean, then?”

“I should never have brought you here, in to the family-”

He laughed his bitterness. “Better to have stayed the dirty orphan? You’re right.”

“No-” she cut him off. “You should have never joined the company.” She touched him, gentle, comforting. He jerked away, rejecting softness as he had ever since the last time he and Ichigo had made love (with the perspective of years he could call it that, just another whip for self flagellation). 

“The company is the only thing I’m good at.”

“No, it isn’t. It corrupted you, has almost destroyed all that was good about you.”

“Shut up,” he begged, “please just -”

She reached to touch him again and he was too tired to fight. “Some of it is still there.”

She held him as he, finally, allowed himself to shatter. He tendered his resignation a week later. 

~*~

This is a story about self-discovery.

Kisuke went back to school and realized his love of numbers was really a love of science. Slowly, imperceptibly, the scales of his old life fell away. He rediscovered the joy of learning, of exploring, of taking things apart to see how they worked. He lost himself in research and, so, found himself. 

He learned what it was to laugh without pain. 

Not governed by the mantra of ‘what will this get me’ he learned to ask ‘is this what I want?’

What he wanted was knowledge, mind a hungry sponge devouring every scrap. What he wanted was music, hours spent in a production booth with every promising act he came across (what use was all that corporate money if he didn’t use it to put music out into the world). What he wanted was redemption. Well- there were some things he couldn’t give himself. 

Still, he found happiness in the small apartment over Kukaku’s tattoo shop. It was close to the clubs, around the corner from his recording studio, a short bus ride from the research laboratory he was working at. 

Weekdays were spent submerged in discovering the mysteries of the natural world. Weeknights spent pouring over sheet music and replaying the same album again and again to hear it  _ just _ right. Weekends were for losing himself in the pulse and beat, the thrum of guitar and sound. 

Yoruichi’s smiles when she looked at him were genuine, and so were his in return. 

“Moving?” he said, one afternoon as he came home to piles of furniture and boxes stacked outside Kukaku’s shop. 

“Yeah,” she admitted, and at least she looked a bit apologetic. “Ganju’s always on the road now and, I dunno, my feet feel itchy. Got a lead on a job in San Francisco so I figure, why not.”

He surveyed the items on the sidewalk. “You leaving most of your gear?” He peered into the shop. 

“Yeah, some guy’s gonna take it over. Apprentice of Shunsui’s apparently ready to strike out on his own. I didn’t get to meet him but Shunsui says he’s ok.”

Kisuke took her out that night - one last night on the town with some of the old gang. His heart froze in his chest as, from the corner of his eye, he caught the sight of a shock of orange hair. But when he turned to look again, it was gone. 

It was another week, passing away into blissful monotony, and the afternoon sun lengthening shadows on the ground when he saw the moving truck parked in front of his building. He froze.

“Kisuke!” 

“Ichigo.” He managed to speak through the shock. Ichigo was older. Still tall and slender but the set of his jaw was firmer, soft lines in the skin around his eyes which no longer danced with boyish charm. But he was still Ichigo, hair long and pulled into an untidy bun still bright orange. 

A laugh spilled out of him; always impossible to stop, with Ichigo. “So corporate life wasn’t for you, huh?”

And then his laugh died on the memory of how things ended between them. 

Ichigo smiled at him, bright and easy. A small flicker of reassurance teased and Kisuke stamped it down. “No, not so much, but the business degree was useful.”

“So whatcha doin’ here? Helping the new guy move in?” 

“ _ I _ live here now, in the apartment above the shop- I am leasing it from Kukaku-” he trailed off..

Kisuke took a moment to take him in. Tattoos covered every exposed inch of Ichigo’s skin, up bare shouldered arms, peeking through at his collar, visible when he lifted his arms to grab another box off the truck.

“ _ You’re _ the new artist!” Kisuke let go the leash holding him back, he needed Ichigo to know things were ok - could be ok - between them, at least on his end, so he smiled. “And now my neighbor, I live in the other apartment above the shop.” 

“Go figure,” Ichigo said and Kisuke wasn’t sure how to read that. “And yeah - I’m a tattoo artist now. I don’t know how but, I get to be artistic, and it leaves me time to be with the people I care about. It isn’t glamorous or anything but - this seems to suit me.” 

“It does,” Kisuke agreed and then clammed up, unable to think of what else to say. There was nothing more  _ to  _ say when he couldn’t say everything.

Kisuke wasn’t stupid enough to believe life would give him another chance at the only thing he’d ever had that really mattered. He’d been so, fucking, stupid. He deserved nothing from Ichigo. It was enough, he figured, to just be able to see Ichigo again from time to time. So he fiddled with his keys and babbled about heading up. 

  
  


A wave of affection surged through Ichigo, he reveled in the familiar blow that knocked the wind out of him when Kisuke smiled. He took in Kisuke, older but still so much the same, and the differences - there was an ease to him that Ichigo didn’t recognize. He hoped it meant good things. Kisuke still thought way too loud, though.

“Do you-”

Kisuke froze again and Ichigo coughed, suddenly nervous so the words came out in a rush. “Do you want to get some dinner… in a bit… when I’m done?”

“I could speed up the ‘bit’, if I help?” Kisuke offered. Ichigo laughed and sent a pair of gloves right for Kisuke’s face. Kisuke’s yelp when they landed was satisfying. 

Kisuke slid the gloves on and Ichigo thanked the Universe that gave him the chance to see Kisuke like this again, light and happy. 

“Synesthesia is playing tonight,” Kisuke said as he hauled down a box. 

“Oh man, really?!” Kisuke, dinner, then watching one of the best bands he’d heard in forever play live? A part of Ichigo wondered if maybe, finally, he could stop drifting. 

Kisuke nodded. “Wanna go?”

“Hells yeah, after dinner though.”

“It’s a plan,” Kisuke said then looked questioningly down at the box. 

“That one goes to the bedroom,” Ichigo said and gave Kisuke the smarmiest grin he could manage. 

He went for the next box with Kisuke’s laugh ringing in his ears. 

~*~

This is a story about second chances.


End file.
